Social web company Bluesky announced it raised $15 million in Series A funding. Blockchain Capital led the funding, which was participated in by Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Amir Shevat of Darkmode, Joe Beda, co-creator of Kubernetes, and others.
Bluesky is a decentralized social app company created by Bluesky Social, a public benefit corporation based in the US, as a proof of concept for the AT Protocol (a communication protocol for decentralized social networks). Jay Graber serves as the CEO of the company, along with XMPP creator Jeremie Miller and Techdirt founder Mike Masnick on the board. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey used to serve on the board but decided to step down.
Bluesky started as an internal Twitter team focused on creating an open-source infrastructure that the platform could be shifted into. But that goal had changed, and the platform spun off as an independent entity.
Bluesky has grown in recent years as many X (previously known as Twitter) users have been seeking alternatives ever since Elon Musk and a consortium of investors acquired the platform.
Bluesky now has more than 13 million users. And Blockchain Capital partner Kinjal Shah will join the board.
Since raising the seed round last year, the company has:
— Grown Bluesky from an invite-only app with 1 million users to an open app serving more than 13 million people
— The company launched federation for self-hosters and developers. Now there are over 1,000 other personal data servers (PDS) outside of Bluesky.
— The company launched custom feeds, making algorithmic choice a reality. Now, there are over 50k+ feeds on Bluesky.
— The company invested heavily in anti-harassment tooling and Trust and Safety.
— The company built labeling services and opened the ability for anyone to run foundational pieces of stackable moderation. Additionally, open-sourced Ozone (a moderation tool).
— The company shipped highly-requested features like direct messaging, GIFs, and video.
— The company has pioneered novel features like starter packs to help communities find each other in a privacy-preserving way.
— The company has partnered with organizations like Buffer to add Bluesky integrations and Namecheap to sell domains.
KEY QUOTES:
“With this fundraise, we will continue supporting and growing Bluesky’s community, investing in Trust and Safety, and supporting the ATmosphere developer ecosystem. In addition, we will begin developing a subscription model for features like higher quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames. Bluesky will always be free to use — we believe that information and conversation should be easily accessible, not locked down. We won’t uprank accounts simply because they’re subscribing to a paid tier.”
“Additionally, we’re proud of our vibrant community of creators, including artists, writers, developers, and more, and we want to establish a voluntary monetization path for them as well. Part of our plan includes building payment services for people to support their favorite creators and projects. We’ll share more information as this develops.”
-The Bluesky Team
